SOMETIMES THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING IS THE THING STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU

The historic Chinese cultural practice of wenwan (文玩), in its simplest understanding, describes a variety of cherished objects that have been closely attended to over time. Involving an array of seemingly common or insignificant things such as small gourds, dried rudraksha seeds, or a simply carved agate pendant, wenwan transforms these objects into reflections of the literati spirit: the constant and never-ending pursuit of cultivation and refinement through the interaction of objects, all the while aimed toward a greater understanding of the self. My own recent interest in wenwan has led me to the practice of rolling a pair of walnuts around in the palm of my hand. Over time, as the walnut shells interact with oil from my skin, their pale beige surface turns a dark, rich red, and additional brushing of their surface sees their matte appearance polished to a high-gloss finish that almost glows with a glasslike sheen.

Of course, a transformation such as this is neither immediate nor arrives overnight. Achievement of this precious state demands constant and consistent attention, dedication, and commitment — as well as a certain faith that one’s actions are oriented in the direction they ought to be. And really, what a beautiful thing it is to quietly roll walnuts around in your hand, to feel each groove and ridge contact every last bit of the skin on your palm and in between your fingers, to not see the full picture of where things end up in the future. To relish in slow change.

This kind of slow, gradual transformation contradicts an impulse to understand change as a discrete occurrence, emerging from a singular locus of swift action. This feels especially true of centuries of historic painting, for example, wherein historic stories depicted by Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Marat (1793) and Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830) portray change at a grandiose, sensationalized pivot point. In contrast, works like Rebecca Burrell’s Sometimes the most beautiful thing is the thing standing right in front of you (2024) offer a counterpoint to this idea: What does attentive engagement, with slow and soft change that occurs over a long stretch of time, look like? It’s a change that is felt throughout the mind and body before it emerges, localized and quiet, and which begins and remains within oneself.

This concern extends to her most recent project, Sometimes the most beautiful thing is the thing standing right in front of you (2024), which reifies skillfully handcrafted clamshell boxes that house the seemingly never-ending collection of VHS tapes that belong to Kevin, her partner of more than nineteen years. Deceptively straightforward, the project as a whole is comprised of many smaller parts and performances that stretch across a gamut of research-based creative practices that took place behind-the-scenes: Burrell meticulously logged the hours she spent laboring on the boxes (much like punching a time clock each day); she regularly wrote critical reflections on the state of her work; she met regularly with Kevin to assess his perception of the ongoing project; she drafted diagrams that charted the philosophical overlaps of time, labor, and self.

These emulations of business-driven surveillance practices feel all too familiar from the perspective of the typical 9-to-5 corporate office worker who is pushed day in and day out to maximize efficiency and productivity. However, all of these studies performed by Burrell were in pursuit of answering a multitude of inquiries included in a publication that accompanied the project, ranging from the sociopolitical position of the work to its psychology to general expounding upon life itself:

Why do we value the objects we value? What does it mean, or look like, to honor someone else's objects? What does it mean to be a partner to someone through the greatest possible mundanity of life? What is the purpose of partnership, particularly when there are no children involved? Where does love fit into it? What is the inherent value of work? Can labor heal? Is the success of my time determined by output? Can I move slowly and still survive in this world? Can slow capitalism be achieved? What and when is enough?

Burrell’s project, through its meticulous self-observations that intersect self-reflexivity and emotional agency, strikingly proposes a slow engagement with objects. In fact, her practices shift the goals of task-based work from maximized productivity to careful attendance to herself, her partner, and the cherished things that exist in their overlap. It is not the goal of money or success that drives her to construct these boxes; it is actually the affective performance of love, the embodied application of its mechanics, that drives the will to create the boxes: the desire to fully know the object in order to know Kevin.

In fact, most intriguing in Burrell’s self-reflexive inquiries is the fact that she openly asks about the affect of love as it intersects with her concerns of the omnipresence of capitalism. The question of her work is not how love in itself is, or could be, a magical antidote to capitalism’s poisonous tendrils, as blindly hopeful expositions on the power of love would suggest (“All you need is love” The Beatles proclaimed). Rather, her repeated rehearsal of love via her ongoing careful construction of the VHS clamshell boxes (which extends into the capacity for attention and growth, as bell hooks would suggest via the work of M. Scott Peck¹) models a framework that establishes the affect as a foundation for revolutionary action: slow and steady change that begins with an understanding of the self.

In repeatedly producing painstakingly crafted boxes for Kevin's VHS tapes, Burrell performs an act of revolutionary love by performing a basic definition of revolution itself: a turning to oneself — and for Burrell, this means turning inward to fully understand the love for her partner by first understanding how it flows within her. “I was in my mid-twenties,” writes hooks, “when I first learned to understand love as ‘the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.’”² For hooks, crucial to this definition of love is its openness to being for the self just as much as it extends toward another. Love remains just as potent when aimed toward the betterment of oneself as it is in attendance of others.

Revolution, via the practice of love, comes slowly. But, as we glean from hooks’s insights, the slow practice of love and therefore revolution is an ongoing and never-ending action, like slowly rolling walnuts in the palm of one’s hand every day, or building box after box after box. Burrell’s project didn’t end upon the completion of a certain number of boxes. Rather, it demonstrates the revolutionary potency of slow dedication — not only to her craft, but to Kevin via one of the material things that he loves; that makes him who he is. The ongoing status of this project, expanding with every piece of board cut and every letter embossed onto the box’s spine, models the idea that the change we desire from revolutionary moments is actually a quiet, gradual accumulation of understanding drawn from repeating and rehearsing and doing, over and over again. Burrell’s project teaches us that revolution is not simply about looking to the future, but constantly returning to what we (think we) know in an attempt to understand it. Only then, through the constant and repeated performance of our faculties, our relationships, our affections, can we claim to know what we know, and subsequently ask what role it plays in our lives (and loves). Sometimes the most beautiful, the most revolutionary thing is the thing standing right in front of you.